“He can't be worrying about the election,” Ida said, confidently. “Mr. Garner comes to see me often and confides in me rather freely, and he says the people are flocking back to Carson in swarms and droves. They understand him now and admire him for the courageous stand he took.” “Well, something is wrong with him,” Helen declared, eying her cousin sadly. “Mam' Linda never makes a mistake; she knows him through and through. She went to thank him last night for getting a position for Pete to work regularly at the flouring mill, and she came back really depressed and shaking her head. “'Suppin certain sho gone wrong wid young mars-ter, honey,' she said. 'He ain't never been lak dis before; he ain't _hisse'f_, I tell you! He's yaller an' shaky an' look quar out'n de eyes.'” “Oh!” and Miss Tarpley sank into one of the chairs in the window. “I'm almost sorry you mentioned that, for now I'll worry. I've always had his cause at heart, and now--Helen, I'm afraid something very, very serious is hanging over him. [Illustration: 0371] I'm not hinting at anything that might come out of his disappointment over your affair with Mr. Sanders, either. It seems to me he accepted that as inevitable and is making the best of it, but it is something else.” “Something else!” Helen repeated. “Oh, Ida, how horribly you talk! Do you mean--is it possible that he was more seriously wounded that night than he has let us know?” “No, it's not that. I don't know what it is. In fact, Mr. Garner says--” “What does he say, Ida?” Helen threw into the gap left by her cousin's failure to proceed, and stood staring. “Well, you know it is easy sometimes to tell when one is not revealing everything, and I felt that way about Mr. Garner when he called night before last. In the first place, though he tried to do it in a casual sort of way, he kept talking of Carson all the time. It was almost as if he had come to see if I would confirm some secret fear of his, for he seemed to get near it several times and then backed out. Once he went further than he intended, for he said, as if it were a slip of the lip, when we were speculating on the possible cause of Carson's depression--he said, 'There is _one_ thing, Miss Ida, that I fear, and I fear it so much that I dare not even mention it to myself.'” “Oh!” exclaimed Helen, and she leaned on the back of her chair; “what could he have meant?”